Jennifer Bartell graduated from Agnes Scott with a degree in English-Literature & Creative Writing, focusing in poetry and nonfiction. She initially left Agnes thinking she wanted to be a nurse; however, she quickly found herself going back to what she knew best–writing. Landing various jobs in newspaper reporting and teaching, it wasn’t until several years later that Bartell went back to school. Last year, in 2014, Bartell graduated from University of South Carolina in Columbia with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies. She currently teaches at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina.

Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer?

Jennifer Bartell ’05: I’ve always been attracted to words and reading, but I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer until I was thirteen years old and started writing poetry.

One year I told my mom I wanted a typewriter for Christmas, a little electric type writer. And at that point she knew that I was doing a lot of writing. Horrible horrible writing, but I was writing. You have to start somewhere!

Writers’ Festival: When was your first work published, and what was that experience like?

Bartell: I guess it was one those young American poetry anthologies in middle school or high school. I remember feeling very proud of my work and had this desire to want to get published again. But I didn’t really take publishing seriously until I got into a MFA program. I don’t know why it took me so long to take poetry seriously.

Before I went into the MFA program, I was working on a poetry project (that I have since abandoned) and getting a manuscript together for publication. But I wasn’t actively sending work out to be published. And I think that just came from being a novice and not knowing a lot about the field.

Writers’ Festival: Would you suggest that students try to start getting published while they’re in college?

Bartell: I would say that young writers need to focus on the craft and focus on the process more than the product and publication. Of course, publication is what you ideally want to be working toward. But I think a lot of young writers get caught up in writing what is publishable without really exploring who they are as an individual and a writer. Focus on developing the craft, read as much as you can, read as widely as you can, and all of the other stuff will fall into place.

Sending stuff out to publishing companies or presses, depending on where you’re sending it, can get really pricey. There’s nothing wrong with supporting presses, but you really need to be sure in your work before you send it out. A lot of people, including myself, send work out prematurely. It’s not where it needs to be. And of course it doesn’t get published! It’s not really good. Not yet.

Who are you as a writer? What are the topics you typically write about?

Bartell: I’m still growing and evolving as a woman and a writer. Writing poetry is a journey, and I say that because of the experiences I’ve been through in the past ten years. I graduated from Agnes Scott in 2005 and then, the next year my mother died. I worked and had various jobs, and when I went back to school, my dad died. So, a lot of that influences my writing. I write a lot about my parents, grief, and loneliness.

And so, I don’t want to say that I use poetry as catharsis, because poetry has to be more than that, but I would say that writing about these experiences is how I have maintained some sanity. Reading poetry, writing poetry, and revising, revising, revising poetry has helped me to figure out a lot of things that would otherwise be very difficult to process.

If you have more questions you’d like to ask, there will be a Q & A session with guest writers, Chris Abani, Tracy K. Smith, and Jennifer Bartell ’05 on Thursday, March 26th at 1pm in Luchsinger Lounge.

Agnes Scott College is now accepting entries for the 44th annual writers’ festival! The entry deadline is December 1, 2014.

Contest categories include poetry, short fiction, personal essay, and one-act play. A prize of $500 will be awarded during the festival to the winning entry in each category. Contest finalists will be notified by email in January. Their work will be included in the Festival Magazine, which is published in March, and they will be invited to a lunch and workshop on March 27.

Only entries following these contest rules will be considered:

The Writers’ Festival competition in poetry, short fiction, personal essay, and one-act play is open to anyone currently enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program in a college or university in the state of Georgia.

Works submitted must be previously unpublished except in campus newspapers or campus literary magazines.

Each entrant may submit up to five poems, up to two stories, up to two essays, and one play. Stories and personal essays must be no longer than 5000 words, poems no longer than 100 lines. Playscripts must be no longer than 30 pages and must be typed in the approved professional format. (See “Guidelines” from Samuel French publishers.)

Entries must be typed in a standard 12-point black-type font (no script fonts) and entries in short fiction and the personal essay must be double-spaced. Entries may use global formatting (for example, first line indents) that can easily be changed to our template for publication.

Entries must be submitted as Word-compatible email attachments to Professor Nicole Stamant at nstamant@agnesscott.edu. Receipt will be confirmed by return email. Each story, essay, play, or set of poems must be in a separate file. The author’s name must not appear within the file. The covering email message must include the author’s name, school, email address, and phone number, followed by a list of titles of all works submitted, including of individual poems.

The deadline for entries is December 1. Finalists will be notified by email and will be allowed to make minor changes of their work before publication; authors retain all rights to their materials and may publish them elsewhere after the competition.

For information about the event, or to receive an electronic copy of the rules, please email Professor Nicole Stamant at nstamant@agnesscott.edu.

Being Flynn is a beautifully haunting yet captivating film that tells the story of lives falling apart and coming together. It displays the relationship between a man and his father, and how they really don’t have a relationship at all. Like a wire that has been coiled around and around for so long, then suddenly, slowly unravels. On the screen in front of our eyes is the unwinding story of Nick Flynn, one of the guest writers that will be visiting campus during the Writer’s Festival.
In 2004, Nick Flynn wrote Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, his memoir. The novel is emotionally challenging and alluring. Each section, or chapter if you will, is a poem in itself; each one so eloquently written, contrasting the devastation and heartache and threshold of numbing pain that consume the pages. Being Flynn would not be here without Nick Flynn’s memoir.
On March 2, 2012, Being Flynn hit the theaters. It was based off of Nick Flynn’s memoir. The basic story line is this: Nick Flynn works at a homeless shelter when he meets his father, a homeless man. Nick grew up knowing who his father was, at least taking his mother’s word for it. He is a drunk and a liar and a thief. But now Nick has to face him, but how? We see his perception of life crumble. Confusion, frustration, humiliation, and hurt paint his face as he tries to make sense of his past and become at peace with himself and those close to him. Paul Dano stars as Nick Flynn, Robert De Niro as his father, and Julianne Moore as his mother.
What must it be like to watch strangers, actors, play out the story of your life? Flynn answers all these questions following the film in another memoir called The Reenactments. He illustrates reaction and turbulent thought process through the filming of Being Flynn, a reenactment of his life.
Julianne Moore talks about why she was attracted to the idea of starring in the film. “[The book] was beautifully written and very unusual, and funny and entertaining, but really quite touching…it’s a beautiful piece of literature, it really is.”

Poet and memoirist Nick Flynn has just finished an engagement at the 10th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival which ran from January 20th-25th. Nick Flynn appeared along with Carolyn Forché, Linda Gregg, Thomas Lux, Campbell McGrath, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Mary Rueﬂe & Tim Seibles. This Festival had the opportunity to invite one more special guest: current Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway.

Nick Flynn will be coming to speak at Agnes Scott College in March for the 43rd Annual Agnes Scott College Writer’s Festival. But before he visits Decatur, GA, Flynn is touring in a few other states and sharing his work with a few other venues. Following the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Flynn will be at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado Feb. 19th to read and talk with Dani Shapiro (this is tentative). He will then be at Seattle, Washington for AWP Feb. 26th- March 1st, followed by a reading at UPENN March 5th. At the end of March (24th-30th) Flynn will hold a week long residency at Agnes Scott College, holding a workshop as well as giving a reading. Agnes Scott College is proud to welcome Nick Flynn as one of the visiting authors for the 43rd Annual Writer’s Festival.

For those of you looking for another place to publish your work, check out the Aurora Arts & Literary Magazine! All Georgia undergraduates are welcome to submit fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and micro-fiction. http://ow.ly/i/4iTiU

As we come into the spring, we want to introduce everyone to our final cast list for this year’s Writers’ Festival! With a new concept and design, this year we have four student artists contributing to the layout of the book. Here’s some sneak peeks:

Name: Sebastien
Occupation: Firefighter
Favorite Author: George Orwell
Description: A Romani immigrant in his mid-30s from Romania, he came to the States on asylum years ago. With his experience in witnessing and experiencing discrimination from a very young age, he has a knack for empathy. Despite his extroverted and mellow personality, he still experiences culture shock. He commits his life to being a rock for his friends and family, and although bothered by feelings of powerlessness when it comes to aiding family and friends still across the earth , he finds it cathartic to write fictional coming of age stories about characters growing up in multiple cultures where they still don’t quite belong.
Fun Fact: Is full to the brim with wisdom such as “Be alert, like the chicken.” His loved ones are still unsure about what that particular phrase means.

Introducing Ira Fletcher!
Ira recently graduated college and is in the process of looking for a job, but he is having trouble, and as a result he spends a great deal of his time at home with not much to do. To fill up his spare time, he writes, which is something that he has always enjoyed doing. He has a few friends who read his work and believe that he should try to get something published. Ira has always said that that’s just what he wants to do, but secretly he doubts that his writing is any good. To change this, he tries to challenge himself by writing about difficult memories, but he nearly always gives up before even finishing the first sentence. However, he is determined to keep trying, if only to prove to himself that he can.

Meet Ying, a 19 year old English major and studio art minor whose favorite pastime is creating limericks to amuse her friends. Her dream is to become a famous poet by writing and illustrating a classic collection of poetry for young adults, but for now she must be content with writing analyses of works by Jane Austin and working part time in her cousin’s cozy book shop. When she can’t concentrate in class or at work, she writes short poems on scraps of paper and leaves them for others to find and enjoy. Her favorite poets include Seamus Heaney and Anna Akhmatova (although it’s hard to pick just two from such a long list), and she has recently become interested in ci poetry.

Meet Valerie, a Theater Major in a graduate school program. She is a writer at heart, and focuses her effort in script and screen writing. One day, Valerie dreams of being the head writer for major motion pictures. But for now, she has to hustle between workshopping classes and rehearsals, since she is the star of her college’s current production, Shakespeare’s 12th Night. Valerie is currently acting in the role of Viola (alias Cesario), but when she isn’t working for class, working the rehearsal stage, or working her part time job at the local donut joint, she’s in her small apartment with her laptop. Writing away!http://ow.ly/i/4egqxhttp://ow.ly/i/4egrihttp://ow.ly/i/4egrBhttp://ow.ly/i/4egrF

We can count down the days until the 43rd Annual Writer’s Festival at Agnes Scott College, as submissions are being reviewed and finalists will be contacted in January 2014. On Nick Flynn’s website (nickflynn.org) his weeklong residency at Agnes Scott College is listed under his upcoming events. While the Writer’s Festival is from March 27th-28th 2014, each year Agnes Scott holds a Writer’s Festival Seminar taught by one of the visiting writers for the week of the Festival. Last year, the Seminar was taught by Christina Garcia, and this year, Agnes Scott is pleased to welcome Nick Flynn to teach the course.
Nick Flynn’s weeklong residency at Agnes Scott will be from March 24th through March 30th in order to allocate time not just for his reading during the Festival, but also for him to engage in a workshop with Agnes Scott students. This year’s Writers’ Festival Seminar class will be taught the week of the 24th Monday through Wednesday in the evening and then continue Saturday and Sunday during the morning. We are counting down the days until Nick Flynn and the other guest writers, Terrance Hayes and Louisa Hill arrive at Agnes Scott’s campus.

This Christmas, we remember the great poet Robert Frost, whose regular visits to Agnes Scott inspired the Writers Festival. Below is one of his poems, “Christmas Trees.”

A Christmas Circular Letter

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.

He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

http://ow.ly/r3VZX
Agnes Scott College is proud to welcome Nick Flynn as one of the visiting writers for the 43rd Annual Writer’s Festival, March 27-28 2014. Nick Flynn is a memoirist known for his memoir trilogy Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, The Ticking is the Bomb, and The Reenactments.

Flynn’s most recent memoir, The Reenactments, focuses on his experience with the making of the film Being Flynn that came out in 2012. Being Flynn is based on Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and details Flynn’s relationship with his father.

Flynn will be one of the three visiting writers for the 43rd Annual Writer’s Festival. He, poet Terrence Hayes, and playwright (and alumna of Agnes Scott College) Louisa Hill will all be welcomed to Agnes Scott’s campus March 27-28 to read their work as well as decide the winners of 2014’s Writer’s Festival.

All undergraduate and graduate students in Georgia are encouraged to submit their non-fiction, fiction, poetry and one-act plays for the competition. Each category has a grand prize of $500, publication in the annual Writer’s Festival Magazine, as well as an opportunity to meet the fantastic visiting writers lined up for this year.

The submission deadline is December 4th 2013. Please submit your work to nstamant@agnesscott.edu and adhere to the following rules:

Contest Rules:

The Writers’ Festival competition in poetry, short fiction, personal essay, and one-act play is open to anyone currently enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program in a college or unviersity in the state of Georgia.
Works submitted must be previously unpublished except in campus newspapers or campus literary magazines. Finalist entries will appear in the Festival Magazine; authors retain all rights to their materials and may publish them elsewhere after the competition.
Entries must be submitted as Word-compatible email attachments to Professor Nicole Stamant at nstamant@agnesscott.edu. Receipt will be confirmed by a return email. Each story, essay, play, or set of poems must be in a separate file. The author’s name must not appear within the file. The covering email message must include the author’s name, school, email address, and phone number, followed by a list of titles of all works submitted, including of individual poems.
Each entrant may submit up to five poems, up to two stories, up to two essays, and one play. Entries must be typed in a standard 12-point Times New Roman font and entries in short fiction and the personal essay must be double-spaced. Entries may use global formatting (for example, first line indents) that can easily be changed to our template for publication.
Stories and essays must be not longer than 5000 words, poems no longer than 100 lines. Playscripts must be no longer than 30 pages and must be typed in the approved professional format. (See “Guidelines”, available from Samuel French publishers.)
The deadline for receipt of entries is December 4.
Finalists will be notified by email in January and will be allowed to make minor changes of their work before publication.